What Happens When Pack-Like American Media Is Not Unbiased Or Free?

NBC Nightly News host Brian Williams immediately spun the story as a political pitfall for the possible presidential contender: "In a jam. A big problem for a man with big ambitions. Tonight, how a traffic nightmare on the world's busiest bridge has spilled into a full blown scandal with the power to damage Chris Christie's political future." Image Credit: MRCTV

What Happens When Pack-Like American Media Is Not Unbiased Or Free?

Information released last week about a possible scandal in the timing and reality of a traffic study leading to the entrance of a main transportation bridge spanning from Ft. Lee, New Jersey to Manhattan, New York had the American media complex working overtime.

The issue raised additional attention because the traffic study/lane closure actions involved New Jersey Republican Governor, Chris Christie, thought of by the media elite as a front-runner for the Republican political party nominee for President of the United States in 2016 against the assumed Democrat political party, former First Lady, Senator, and Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.

Emails were discovered that placed the lane closures in Ft. Lee, New Jersey as a trumped-up action for payback to the Democrat Mayor of Ft. Lee for not endorsing Chris Cristie's second term run for Governor.

As a result, EMT response to a missing child and a heart attack victim were delayed.  Even after being informed of the EMT problems his traffic study/lane closure actions were causing, it was asserted that an angry Governor Christie refused to lift his vindictive blockade.

In a series of emails, Christie’s deputy chief of staff Bridge Anne Kelly discussed the closures weeks before they occurred, and appears to suggest that the closures were politically motivated.

“Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” Kelly wrote to David Wildstein, a Christie’s appointee to the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey. ”Got it,” Wildstein replied.

How Democrats React graphic. Image Credit: The Patriot Post

This excerpted and edited from NewsBusters -

There's Already 17 Times More Coverage on Christie Scandal Than in Last Six Months of IRS
By Scott Whitlock

In less than 24 hours [after these assertions came to light, and after Gov. Christie held a 2 hour news conference],the big three networks devoted 17 times more coverage to a traffic scandal involving Chris Christie than they've allowed in the last six months to Barack Obama's Internal Revenue Service controversy. Since the story broke on Wednesday that aides to the New Jersey governor punished a local mayor's lack of endorsement with a massive traffic jam, ABC, CBS and NBC have responded with 34 minutes and 28 seconds of coverage. Since July 1, these same networks managed a scant two minutes and eight seconds for the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups.

In contrast, journalists such as Good Morning America's George Stephanopoulos pounced on the developing Christie story. The GMA host opened the program on Thursday by announcing, "Chris Christie in crisis. Calls at this hour for the feds to step in, investigate the explosive e-mails."

Stephanopoulos later wondered, "One of the big questions right now, how much has it hampered his White House prospects?" Guest Matt Dowd insisted that, on a scale from one to ten, the controversy was already at a "four or five."

On the CBS Evening News, anchor Scott Pelley sounded a similar alarm: "Tonight, a potential presidential candidate caught up in scandal. E-mails show massive New Jersey traffic jams were engineered by aides to Governor Chris Christie as political payback."

Since Wednesday night, NBC included six reports over 14 minutes and 14 seconds. CBS devoted five reports over 12 minutes and 27 seconds. ABC managed 4 stories over seven minutes and 47 seconds.

As a comparison over the last six months, NBC featured a scant five seconds on updating the IRS story. CBS responded with a minute and 41 seconds. ABC produced a meager 22 seconds.

Although the media downplayed the IRS controversy from July through December (it first broke in May), it's not as though there wasn't much happening. As the Media Research Center documented, many potential story leads developed.

In December, House investigator Darrell Issa announced that the FBI and IRS chief counsel is stonewalling the investigation. In October, newly obtained e-mails showed that the scandal-plagued Lois Lerner, the woman at the center of the controversy, illegally gave Tea Party tax info to the FEC. That same month, it came out that an IRS official may have given confidential information to the White House.

These stories were buried by ABC, CBS and NBC, the same networks that have immediately deluged Republican Chris Christie, a 2016 contender, with coverage for his scandal.
[Reference Here]

The American media complex is neither Free or Unbiased.

Most people who listen to, or read information dispatches from AP, Reuters, NBC, CBS, ABC, The New York Times, BBC, and etc. do not know that they are getting their information from employees that all work from offices that can only be understood as a complex. The media complex, centered in the middle of the island of Manhattan, New York, is a four square block area above and below ground level around Rockefeller Center. The people who work for any of these organizations work just around the corner from each other, usually go to lunch and dinner with each other, foster professional relationships for future job opportunities, and to a high 80 to 90 percentile, vote for much the same large central government policies and politicians as America's Democrat Political Party embraces.

It is this herd-mentality and herd-proximity that has diluted the hallmark values of a free and open press. The Gov. Christie flap is just puts a magnifying glass on the level of bias and lack of freedom upon which an organization has to investigate, produce information, and broadcast it in a sufficient volume so that all citizens become informed.

This excerpted and edited from PJ Media -

No, Those de Blasio-as-Bane Parodies Make No Sense Whatsoever
Ed Driscoll - PJ Media - January 13th, 2014 - 1:25 pm

Plus #Bridgegate, Gotham City-style, when “De Blasio’s handpicked City Council speaker blocked the Brooklyn Bridge with Occupy Wall Street,” the Daily Caller reports today:

Democratic New York City mayor Bill de Blasio’s handpicked City Council speaker was arrested for blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge while participating in a union-organized Occupy Wall Street protest.

The incident occurred a little more than two years before de Blasio railed against the “immoral” and “not mature” actions of New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s aides in conducting a disruptive “traffic study” on the George Washington Bridge for apparently political reasons.

Melissa Mark-Viverito, who became Council speaker last week after de Blasio and his aides lobbied Council members on her behalf, was arrested on November 17, 2011 while sitting with a group on the approach to the Brooklyn Bridge chanting “We are the 99 percent” and “All day! All week! Occupy Wall Street!”

Mark-Viverito, an eighth-district City councilwoman, and her group only remained in their position for a “few minutes” before they were arrested, but Mark-Viverito noted that “we probably would have been there you know 16, 17 hours.” SEIU 1199 president George Gresham was also part of the group.
----
Meanwhile, back in New Jersey, Ed Morrissey notes that the Feds may be probing Chris Christie over the use of Hurricane Sandy relief funds:

Christie burned a lot of bridges in that debate, and in his embrace (literally) of Obama in those final days of the 2012 election.  Ironically, it’s the Obama administration that is widening its probe into the use of those funds now. Don’t expect too many Republicans to rush to Christie’s side in this fight, except to point out that the $2.2 million difference between the two advertising campaign proposals amounts to 0.041% of the porkfest Barack Obama and Chris Christie demanded from Congress for Sandy relief.  There may be a lot of reasons why victims haven’t seen their Sandy aid yet, but this ad campaign isn’t one of them.

George H.W. Bush tried to make nice with Democrats in 1990 by giving in to a tax increase, only to have Bill Clinton(!) call him a liar and use Bush’s rhetoric successfully against him during the 1992 campaign:

John McCain spent virtually his entire career in politics playing the role of iconoclastic “Maverick,” which meant frequently siding with Democrats and pulling the rug out from Republicans, only to discover in 2008 that at election time, the media wing of the Democrat party plays hardball, for keeps, and in the midst of fullblown hopenchange fever cheerfully devoured his presidential campaign in 2008 without batting an eye. Similarly, Chris Christie has all too often as governor of New Jersey embraced Obama and offered very few coattails to his fellow Republicans, particularly when it mattered in the fall of 2012 during the Romney campaign. He too is in the process of having his presidential hopes devoured by the media left.

Charlie Brown never learned that Lucy will always pull the football away; why don’t Republicans ever learn that however much they cozy up to the left, they will eventually be fatally stung. It is the nature of the scorpion.
[Reference Here]

Perspective is everything. One has to stick one's head out from under the Media Complex rock that it is 'imposed' under via the traditional methods and look around in order to begin to find something that is more in-depth than the herd-media-news we get so easily.

... notes from The EDJE